SCIENCE
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Trump Quietly Halts Money to States for Preventing Disaster Damage
CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is scaling back a multibillion-dollar program that has been the backbone of state efforts to protect homes, hospitals and other structures from floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. President Donald Trump stopped approving new allocations in early April from a federal program that has been a top funding source for protecting people and property from disasters since…
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Scientific American’s 1925 Coverage of Eclipses, Mediums and Inventions
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. I was out of the office taking a little break last week, so I didn’t have the chance to write and record our usual news roundup. Instead, I thought it would be fun to dive back into the Scientific American archives for the first time in a…
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Ancient DNA Reveals Phoenicians’ Surprising Ancestry
Ancient DNA Reveals Phoenicians’ Surprising Ancestry Phoenician civilization spread its culture and alphabet across the Mediterranean but not, evidently, its DNA By Ewen Callaway & Nature magazine A death mask from the third or second century bc found in the Phoenician trading city of Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Peter Horree/Alamy Stock Photo An ancient Middle Eastern civilization that…
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Why Narcissists Emerge as Leaders Even in Childhood
Narcissistic leaders both fascinate and repel us. They can be charming, act assertively and articulate visions that may inspire confidence, especially in times of uncertainty. This can attract many followers. In 1931 Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, echoed this belief: “[Narcissists] impress others as being ‘personalities’; they are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take…
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How THC, the Psychoactive Compound in Weed, Gets You High
Marijuana contains more than 500 active compounds. But most people focus on two: There’s cannabidiol, or CBD, which reduces inflammation. And then there’s THC, which is the main psychoactive component—it’s the reason weed gives you the relaxed and “euphoric” sensation of being high. THC stands for tetrahydrocannabinol. It’s a compound that comes from the flowers of female cannabis plants, though…
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NASA and NOAA Trump Funding Cuts Jeopardize These Key Climate and Space Projects
Preliminary copies of some of the US government’s spending plans suggest that President Donald Trump’s administration intends to slash climate and space science across some US agencies. At risk is research that would develop next-generation climate models, track the planet’s changing oceans and explore the Solar System. NASA’s science budget for the fiscal year 2026 would be cut nearly in…
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This Butterfly’s Epic Migration Is Written into Its Chemistry
This Butterfly’s Epic Migration Is Written into Its Chemistry Painted ladies travel the globe every year on massive journeys—including across the Sahara By Jesse Greenspan edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Painted ladies are the ultramarathoners of the butterfly world—even more so than monarchs. Scientists have long known about their globetrotting tendencies, but only recently have their exact migratory routes come…
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Black Communities Affected By Opioids Have Been Mostly Ignored in Settlements
After a troubling spike that began in 2019, the total number of drug overdose deaths dropped in 2023, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of these deaths were related to opioid use. Despite the drop, steep racial disparities in opioid deaths, particularly among Black people, remain. Why? In part, these disparities persist because of…
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Letting Kids Fail Is Crucial
When my older son Jack was in high school, he accepted a summer job selling solar panels door-to-door. My first reaction was to tell him not to do it. I felt protective—afraid of the rejection he would face on doorsteps all summer long. I just couldn’t see how my thoughtful son, a good athlete and straight A student, could cope…
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The Kakeya Conjecture, a Decades-Old Math Problem, Is Solved in Three Dimensions
Mathematicians Solve Decades-Old Spinning Needle Puzzle For a long time, the Kakeya conjecture, which involves rotating an infinitely narrow needle, kept mathematicians guessing—until now By Manon Bischoff edited by Daisy Yuhas Sean Gladwell/Getty Images It is rare to read about “spectacular progress” or a “once-in-a-century” result in mathematics. That’s for good reason: if a problem has not had a solution…
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